Todd LaScola, president of CPI Financial Services Inc., was ordered by a federal judge in Boston to pay nearly $1.3 million to the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 99 Retirement Plan, Cranston, R.I. Mr. LaScola failed to respond to a lawsuit filed in January by the Labor Department accusing him and CPI of misusing plan assets. Mr. LaScola was investment adviser to the union pension plan in the late 1990s. He is serving an eight-year prison sentence for embezzlement.
The Labor Department’s lawsuit alleges that Mr. LaScola and CPI invested nearly $6 million of the plan’s $30 million in assets in high-risk notes issued by a Chicago real estate management company. Mr. LaScola received more than $440,000 in commissions and fees for that investment. When trustees demanded the money back, Mr. LaScola returned the $6 million to the plan by obtaining it illegally from other investors, the suit claimed.
